


DOCENDO DISCITUR

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a gift for Cypheroftyr, for the Dragonageholidaycheer Valentine's Day exchange on tumblr. Zevran takes an escaped slave under his wing in Antiva City; Isabela finds herself with an apostate stowaway aboard her ship; and Fenris finds himself looking after Anders, who might well be killed before his first day of Antivan freedom is up. <i>Zevran’s friends often tried to kill him.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	DOCENDO DISCITUR

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cypheroftyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cypheroftyr/gifts).



> Much love to the wonderful Cypheroftyr, for always being so encouraging, full of ideas and full of generosity. Also, this idea would never have existed in the first place if Iapetsuneume hadn't mentioned Zevran and Fenris, then patiently listened to me ramble about Fenris-as-a-Crow-of-sorts for far too long.

Zevran’s friends often tried to kill him.

This was the way of things within the Crows; one kept one’s friends as close as one’s enemies up until the point one realized a friend was no different from an enemy. Then, blood was spilled.

This was no ideal; it was instead precaution. It saved as many lives as it sacrificed and it gave reasons for the scars that followed, burdens of proof, each job completed, each transaction paid for.

So when Zevran said that an old friend intended to visit, Fenris stood and headed for his sword.

Zevran’s chuckle was low and privately warm as he bent to remove a boot, then loosened a broken piece of cobble stuck within the sole. It fell free at last from its lodging in the leather after a period of determined shaking and skittered across the floor, coming to a halt beside Fenris’s bare toe.

‘No, no no,’ Zevran said. ‘It is not that kind of meeting. At least—I am _hoping_ it is not that kind of meeting. Though…with the pirate in question, I suppose it is true that one can _never_ tell.’

‘With any pirate in question,’ Fenris replied.

Zevran acquiesced with a shrug and a bow of his head, fingers lifted in a facsimile of casual agreement. ‘But of course, you are right—as you always are. Tell me: does that not grow tiresome for you? To be right so often, and so strong the rest of the time?’

It did not grow tiresome. And, if it were not constantly guarded, it would not have the chance to _grow_ at all.

Zevran must have known this—as after all, his friends often tried to kill him.

Fenris reached for his sword despite his reassurances; Zevran tsked, a clucking thing, then fell silent as he saw to his other boot. Fenris crouched beside the customary tools, observed the latest chip in the old blade, and drew out the stone. It would strengthen the metal until at last, worn down beyond its measure, there would be nothing left to strengthen at all.

‘Come now,’ Zevran said, more softly. ‘Do you not care to share your poetry with me…? Even if it is not the sort I always prefer, I can see it upon your face—these shadows of your _deep thoughts_ , of which you have so many.’

Whether or not it was meant to be a joke, it did not manage to interrupt the flow of Fenris’s hands. Over and over the stone and the blade went, together and separately, the noise not loud and not without rhythm. It had its purpose, something without poetry and also without beauty. All it was meant to be was hard—and strong, not unlike whoever wielded it.

In that regard, Zevran was correct. But the truth was that the two needed no comparison. 

The cracks in the weapon were like the lines in a palm, the tattoos a curious city elf assassin chose to wear—and the tattoos a slave born into the infusion of lyrium had _not_ chosen to wear.

‘Let me guess,’ Zevran suggested, ‘you are comparing yourself to your sword, a time-honored and _weary_ weapon, though at least it does not once have cause to question its place. You strengthen yourself as you tend to your blade—and together you are the scourge of Antiva City, while this is the only _real_ partnership you will allow.’

It was close to the truth. But that was not all there was to it.

‘No,’ Fenris said. Then, his hand stilling at its work, he added, ‘…I do not pick locks.’

Zevran sighed, putting his feet up on the table and wiggling his toes in much the same fashion as he wiggled his fingers. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Nor do I. But _shhh_ —I would appreciate it if you kept my little secret.’

That secret had been the cause for some distress not on the first job Fenris had attended, but rather on the second. The first was standard and required no acts of roguery, while the second had far too many locks to pick. Though Zevran’s hands were in slim, constant motion, they had not found the way of it in time. ‘It would seem,’ he’d said, and ‘ _perhaps_ ,’ and ‘just a moment longer,’ and finally ‘now _this_ is trickier than any nun I have ever—’ before the cries of alarm within the estate inevitably began, and he grabbed Fenris by the strap of one gauntlet, tugging him into the alleys and shadows, even laughing as he went.

‘We shall simply have to find another way,’ Zevran had explained after, unconcerned despite the flush of his skin—despite the flush that Fenris’s pulse matched, a life lived in near-calls and close misses and outright failure he had not, until that point, known was possible.

But it was.

After that came poisoned wine and an exchange of coin in leather bags, a toast in a taproom known as _The Flint and Hide_ , whiskey that burned brighter than any simple fire. ‘Success,’ Zevran had called it. ‘Does it not taste sweeter for the knowledge of its opposite?’

‘It does not taste sweet,’ Fenris had replied.

Mistakes could be made in small measure, at the right place if not at the wrong time. That was what marked the distance between Antiva City and any in Tevinter.

Zevran had not asked for the story of it all, the past that haunted but did not give chase. He had seen Fenris’s uses. He had also found Fenris near dead and half starved in a warehouse on the docks, hidden between two barrels, listening to the slosh of the water beneath the floorboards, splintered and dusty.

‘A kitten of my own,’ Zevran had said. ‘You _are_ a bit big for a household pet, but you _do_ have the pretty stripes for it.’

Now, Fenris polished his sword.

Zevran’s friends often tried to kill him—and one of them was coming for a visit.

‘At the very least, she gave fair warning,’ Zevran said. ‘But like a summer squall, to see the cloud upon the horizon and to be prepared for weathering its rollicking… Those are two _very_ different things, are they not?’

‘We shall see,’ Fenris replied.

*

The following day dawned with the usual aromas. Fenris could smell fresh fish—whatever passed for ‘fresh’ in these parts—beneath the stench of the tanneries, their beaten hides and the sludge that poured into the water, refuse disposed of by the bucketful, enough for the gulls to peck at.

They both woke early, before the sun—but not before the smoke. When the gulls alighted on their sill they stole away with some of the fruit in the bowl; when none of them dropped dead from the sky mid-flight, Fenris knew that it was safe to eat without fear of poison. He did not bother with the distraction, though Zevran polished a few grapes on the front of his leathers, licking the juices from his fingertips after.

Fenris remained by the window. From that point of vantage he could see the ships and their masts, spindles rising into the sky, as at last the sun rose.

‘She…does not often dock where others might,’ Zevran explained, checking the poisons in his rings. ‘And I mean that in _every_ innuendo possible. Still, I do not think you will see her come in—and then, all at once, there she will blow…or so the saying goes.’

Fenris had not heard this saying, not even bandied between the sailors who stayed—for a time—in Antiva City. Some left with the next tides; others left bloated and belly-up upon those tides. Unless they were a name upon a paper—one Zevran read aloud and often mispronounced—they were of no concern, their boasts meaningless, their cargo too often empty.

‘I think you will like her,’ Zevran added. ‘I _know_ she will like you.’

‘Why is that,’ Fenris said.

‘Why not?’ Zevran replied.

This, too, seemed immaterial. Fenris had never before given consideration to who tolerated him and who did not. Within the ranks of the Crows, being _liked_ did not exempt them from the regular attempts on their lives. The precautions with which Zevran generally approached a reunion with an old friend were proof enough of that logic.

As always, a friend was as liable as an enemy to turn and stab them in the dark.

It would have been better to have neither friend _nor_ enemy, but not everyone had that luxury.

A crate of fish spilled at Fenris’s feet. He sidestepped the mess, the silver scales and the pink guts and their trembling gills. They found a spot not unnoticeable but not offensive in the shadow of a tannery wall, and there they waited—for the summer squall to arrive.

The hours passed. Zevran, chuckling, suggested approaching a few of the nearby dockhands for a round or two of Wicked Grace. ‘No, I suppose not,’ he added afterward, flicking an old grease-flake stained with purple grape juice from the corner of his thumb. ‘Such a pity you have never had the posture for cards. The blank face, yes. The shoulders—not at all.’

It was because of the weight of the blade, a two-handed sword in a city of daggers.

The ships creaked in their berths and the sun rose at their backs. The action around them grew quieter after the first flush of it; the break for the midday meal saw every able hand turned to feeding, every mouth stuffed full with cheese and bread and drink rather than coarse shouts and coarser shanties. Zevran was _not_ quiet, but neither did he say anything of great importance, murmuring asides about the quality of the air or the stench of the tannery, and how he found both to be ‘refreshing.’ Fenris shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the only sign of his impatience in his balance on the rotting planks.

‘Ah.’ Zevran had found his focus at last. ‘The storm approaches.’

Fenris had not seen anything—no new boats had sailed in to take harbor despite his keen watch—but Zevran’s face was turned away from the water, toward a flicker of movement beyond a dark alleyway, a woman with a bright flash of blue in her hair and too many somethings sparkling around her throat.

It was gold, Fenris realized, and the pirate wore it well; he could do no more than observe as she made her approach, but all the details were present and accounted for, and she was dressed in an archon’s ransom, which hadn’t made a sound as she drew near.

The trouble with so much coin—with so much metal—was that it always gave its owner away with some clink or clatter, or so Fenris had once thought.

Zevran claimed it was possible to learn everything of a stranger in one glance, even easier the more they wore out in the open. How shiny were they, and how pretty? Only a whisper of wealth here and there indicated real success, confidence in subtlety, while gold-plates and gaudery suggested self-importance. The latter was the prime quality of an easy mark.

But Fenris did not yet know what it meant when a pirate chose to dress in what amounted to the contents of a magister’s vault, jewelry winking at her ears and wrists, catching the sunlight when she lifted her palm in a cheerful salute.

It was nearly the perfect diversion. Fenris was so occupied with Zevran’s _old friend_ that he barely noticed the man accompanying her, concealed for the most part in her shadow, bringing up the rear like a skiff in her wake. He was neither the storm nor the ship—nor the pirate, not from the way he was dressed.

From the way he was dressed, he appeared to be homeless—or perhaps an escaped convict.

The feathers at his shoulders were damp; the hair swept back from his brow was loose; the stubble at his chin and jaw was dark. There was an earring in his left ear, a burnished flash so dwarfed by his companion’s brighter jewelry that there was almost no reason to notice it, other than that it _was_ there, however minimal.

‘Zevran, in all the _lovely_ flesh,’ the pirate said. ‘You sneaky little thing—you didn’t tell me we’d have guests.’

‘ _Isabela_ ,’ Zevran replied with equal enthusiasm. ‘Neither did you, I feel it oh-so-pertinent to mention.’

‘What, this old thing?’ Isabela glanced over her shoulder. It was the man’s turn to wave, a wiggle of ungraceful fingers that would not have been able to _pretend_ to pick a lock. ‘Just something I picked up along the way. He’s very…handy.’

‘He stowed away on the ship and you put him to good use?’ Zevran asked.

‘Well, we _were_ going to throw him overboard to make the ship go faster,’ Isabela said, ‘but then I remembered why I liked him so much in the first place. Oh, I’ve been _itching_ to tell you all about it ever since Denerim—you see, he has this _electricity_ trick, and if it doesn’t catch on here, I’ll eat my hats. And I mean _all_ of them.’

‘I do wonder if the feathers would tickle on the way down,’ Zevran replied.

There was a pause. It did not last. Only an instant after it made itself known, Zevran and Isabela began to laugh together as if on cue, both stepping forward to embrace the other with open arms. Fenris marked every potential spot for a hidden blade on Isabela’s person but none was drawn, even though he counted three—no, four, the last pulling his gaze into the shadows upon her thigh.

‘But tell me about yours—he has _such_ nice eyes,’ Isabela said when it was over, catching Fenris in the act. He was not subtle—but then, as Zevran said, those with such large swords did not _need_ to be subtle.

‘The eyes are not what most people mention first,’ Zevran admitted.

‘No,’ the man with the feathered shoulders said. ‘I should think it would be all those shiny tattoos, wouldn’t it?’

‘What can I say?’ Isabela placed her hands on her hips and Fenris could not help but feel as though he was on display—not the same spectacle he made in the Imperium, currently armed with leathers between gaze and skin. And at least here, he was not glistening. ‘You _know_ I’ve always had a _thing_ for deep, soulful eyes.’

‘And the elves who own them,’ Zevran said. ‘But where are my manners? This is Fenris, an…acquaintance of mine. We do the odd job together now and then, and he is also…handy, shall we say? Especially when it comes to _smashing_ things.’

‘ _Smashing_ indeed,’ Isabela agreed.

‘And I’m Anders,’ the man with the feathered shoulders said. ‘But if you want, you can call me Mr. Electricity Trick. Everyone does it—don’t they, Isabela? I mean— _Captain_.’

He glanced at Fenris. Fenris looked away.

‘You must tell me more about this trick of yours,’ Zevran said, throwing an arm around Anders’s feathers and guiding him away from the ships behind them. ‘Over a few drinks, of course. Is there any better way to hear a story—especially when it is a dirty one?’

‘And who’s paying?’ Isabela asked.

‘All in good time,’ Zevran replied.

*

The drink in _The Hide_ never sat well with Fenris’s stomach, which had its share of troubles even when he was not pouring poison into it directly. He had once been denied food at regular intervals; he did not know hunger as such, only the pains that followed hunger and that also followed filling the belly too quickly. While the others drank and insulted the vintage, Fenris held his tankard in both hands and did not sip from it, or even feign the act.

Someone had to keep his head above the sawdust.

Most were happy enough to let that someone be him—and so was he. He saw the sense in it and, also sensibly, did not breathe too deeply when his face was directly over the cups.

‘—so then _he_ says,’ Isabela was in the midst of explaining, ‘that it _was_ a staff in his pocket, but he was _still_ happy to see me!’

‘Tried and true,’ Zevran replied, wiping an invisible tear from the corner of his eye. Fenris did not even see it glitter. He knew it had never been there at all. ‘Ah—it simply doesn’t get old, does it?’

‘She said it was charming,’ Anders agreed, chin in both hands. ‘I always _knew_ I was charming, but it’s something else to have a pirate—’ Isabela cleared her throat. ‘—a _beautiful_ pirate _queen_ confirm what you’ve always suspected about yourself.’

Such an estimation might confirm something else: poor taste in one, an easy ego to flatter in another, or simply the madness that set in during a long ocean journey—without the skies for company, with only the promise of a storm to complicate the empty horizon. Fenris slid his tankard away from him on the table, counting the other patrons in the taproom who were watching them.

Five, by his appraisal. There was a sixth, but his interest was not in their business; rather, it was in Isabela’s figure, as that leer had a different focus. The others marked the jewelry Isabela wore with a keener interest than they shaped her body. And some had their sights trained on Zevran instead, a personal study rather than a general sense of opportunity. They took note of where his daggers were sheathed, where his legs were crossed, and how many drinks he had been served that afternoon.

Some may have wished for revenge. One had a familiar scar. Another was a stranger and the rest were cowled, as any sensible assassin would be in _The Hide_.

Yet Zevran continued to laugh, his hair drawn back from his face, no more the warm and private chuckle of subtle humor than Isabela’s matching laughter.

They found something about this meeting uproarious. They drew attention to themselves naturally, as a lamp drew all the little night bugs buzzing too close to the burning light.

Across the way, Anders was attempting to meet Fenris’s eyes. When that failed, he cast his attentions instead to the customers Fenris had been studying, and each suit of boiled leather shifted meaningfully at so obvious a gaze.

‘Duckling,’ Isabela said, putting a hand on Anders’s shoulder and ruffling his feathers. ‘What did I _tell_ you back on the boat?’

‘To surprise you with my wicked fingers as often as possible?’ Anders supplied.

‘No, not that—I meant the _other_ thing,’ Isabela said.

‘That the Maker blessed us all when he invented naughty mages?’ Anders supplied again.

Fenris felt his molars grind together, not into dust but something dangerously close to shattering. He had assumed—and now he knew beyond the possibility of doubt.

There was no touch of the magister in this one, no hint of power that built its precedence upon subjection or took its strength from the knowledge that others were weak. But it was dangerous for the simple fact that it _was_ in the first place—and that it seemed without control, wiggling fingers and dirty feathers and unshaven face. If he could not look after himself then there was no reason to believe he could tend to his spells with any efficiency, either, and as dangerous as a _cruel_ mage was, a stupid one, a foolish one, a _careless_ one could be even worse.

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ Isabela admitted. ‘But I meant the bit about staring. This is Antiva City, duckling, not the Circle Tower.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Anders said. ‘Is it really? I _knew_ something smelled different, but I just couldn’t put my finger on what.’

‘The rule of the Crows is to stare only when you are prepared to lose at least one of your eyes.’ Zevran tipped his empty tankard in an invisible toast, then sighed when there was no more to drink. Without comment, Fenris exchanged their cups, and Zevran’s fingers rested in the air above his gauntlet for a moment before they chose to dance away elsewhere. ‘And—since your eyes are so _very_ pretty as they are—I would stare only at those things that cannot cut them out, would you not agree?’

He had spared the same speech for Fenris once a few years back. Fenris had not flinched to hear it, listening through the haze of fever, drinking the water Zevran offered. That water had meant more than the advice—but only at the time.

Anders rubbed at the corner of his eye with the knuckle of his forefinger. ‘ _Is_ there anything in this place that _won’t_ cut my eyes out?’ he asked. ‘Or should I just…close them now? Borrow two eyepatches from Isabela to be on the safe side?’

‘Eyepatches on pirates.’ Isabela sighed deeply. ‘Can you even imagine? The stories they feed these poor, deprived little things locked away in their big, bad towers…’

‘Even the chairs are armed to the teeth,’ Anders added in an overwrought whisper. ‘I think this tankard is already trying to kill me.’

‘It is not the tankard itself but what it holds that you should fear,’ Fenris said.

‘He talks.’ Now it was Isabela’s turn to lift her empty cup in an empty toast. ‘I do so _love_ it when he does that.’

‘He has an exceptional voice,’ Zevran agreed. ‘Made even prettier for its rarity. How little cause we have to hear it; how much we enjoy the dulcet tones when we do…’

‘Deep and rumbling and delicious,’ Anders concluded. His eyes sparkled. No one had seen fit to cut them out yet but it was only a matter of time now, and it was best not to grow accustomed to these things that were so easily sacrificed—through a tangled web of incompetence and imprudence.

Most were not made for Antiva.

 _Sometimes,_ Zevran had said, _I suspect_ you _are not made for Antiva either, my friend._

But the streets were narrow and tangled, each alleyway tumbling into the next, and it was easy to lose whoever was tailing you—whether they found their reasons to give chase in Antiva or somewhere else, somewhere in the past.

The enemies Fenris found here were Zevran’s enemies—because the friends were always Zevran’s friends.

Fenris was not made for Antiva.

That was why it suited him.

‘But, as with all rare things, the moment you call attention to it, the rose ceases to bloom in _quite_ the same way.’ Zevran set down his empty tankard and reached to his back—all the chairs in the taproom scraped with promise, until their fellow brawlers recognized a simple motion when they saw it. Zevran was doing nothing more dangerous than scratching the nape of his neck, rubbing a lock of hair between his fingers, then combing his nails against the scalp. Fenris recognized that he did it on purpose—to keep his pursuers on their toes even when they were sitting down. ‘…Ah well. So it must be. These disappointments bring the bitterness to life’s sweetness.’

‘You always did get so poetic when you were drunk,’ Isabela said.

‘Shall I recite the one about the nun from Nevarra?’ Zevran asked. ‘If I recall, Isabela, that always _was_ your favorite.’

‘I think I know that one,’ Anders said. ‘In fact, I’m almost certain _I_ made it up. Is it the one where she lays every brick—’

‘ _Don’t_ spoil the punchline,’ Isabela said. ‘He’s always doing that. Can’t train him out of it, either. Like a naughty kitten, this one.’

‘Very naughty,’ Anders agreed.

‘Then Antiva City will suit you just fine,’ Zevran concluded, ‘even if you do not seem to embrace its leathers as readily as others.’

Anders drooped, his feathers wilting. ‘It’s not so much the leathers I want to embrace as what’s _under_ the leathers, if you catch my meaning.’

‘And _that’s_ why I keep him around,’ Isabela said.

One of the cowled figures by the bar removed a knife and began to pick at the dirt beneath his nail with the tip. Anders did not detect it; Isabela shifted with a lazy shrug and a roll of her shoulders; Zevran and Fenris required no exchange of glances to take note of what it meant.

The locals, as Zevran would say, were growing restless.

And there was no sleep for the wicked, just as there was no rest for the weary.

‘Well then,’ Zevran said, clapping his hands against his thighs. ‘Perhaps we should take our personal business somewhere more…private? If we are to discuss the delicate matters of Nevarran nuns—and pretty eyes better suited to staying in their heads—we might wish to do so where we might draw the curtain, so to speak.’

‘Why, Zevran,’ Isabela replied, ‘I’m no shy flower, but I was beginning to think you’d _never_ ask.’

*

The room they shared—upon Zevran’s insistence; ‘I will consider you my personal bodyguard,’ he had said, flashing his teeth for Fenris in a lean grin, ‘and I will use you in my personal fantasies just as thoroughly, believe me!’—had little in the way of personal touches, unless one counted vials of poisons and other ingredients as decorative items.

There were no vases or columns or standing screens, no low tables with glinting bowls or proud statues or mosaics upon the wall. The closest they had to a painting was a bloodstain beside the window and damage from a leak in the ceiling; the darkened plaster was a map of some distant coast, perhaps one of the many Fenris had passed while holed below-deck on his way from Seheron to Antiva.

‘I think it reminds me of Rivain,’ Zevran had said, lying back in his bed across the way. ‘But then, I have never been to Rivain—so how would I know the truth of it?’

 _The truth of it_. Had Fenris been a man for wagers—if he had been possessed of the proper posture for such a claim—he might have posited that the truth did not matter, not so long as the stain remained. It could be whatever they wished—for in the end it was nothing at all.

Isabela pulled up a chair. Anders—because he knew no better—lingered by the window. The curtain was not drawn; any passersby on the street could have seen the shadow he presented, the clumps of feathers at his shoulders and the beak of his profile, shifting as he turned to glance down at the back alley below.

He was nervous. It was uncomfortable to see how well it showed.

Isabela, on the other hand, was not nervous. She toyed with one large dagger, though she did not deign to insult the blade by picking dirt from beneath her thumbnail with the tip.

There were some who did this very thing in order to present a certain image. They imagined the tactic was intimidating, and it _was_ successful—if only against those who did not know any better.

Isabela had decided to toss the knife into the air. She caught it by the curved hilt each time, no gilding on the blade, nothing more than the nocks and wear of a weapon that had seen much use and all of it clever in its time.

‘Now then, Isabela,’ Zevran said, leaning against the wall and crossing his legs at the ankle. ‘You have come here for some purpose, have you not?’

‘I couldn’t remember how the poem went and I needed you to finish it for me,’ Isabela said. ‘ _There once was a nun from Nevarra_ …’

‘If you were really that curious, _I_ could have told you what comes next,’ Anders said. His breath left a faint ghost of condensation upon the already dirty window-glass. ‘ _Her name, I recall, it was Clara_ —’

‘This electricity trick…’ Zevran lifted his fingers. They did not sparkle, but they gave the impression of something touched by _magic_ all the same. ‘It must be _very_ good.’

‘It’s hard to believe,’ Isabela agreed, ‘but somehow, it’s worth it and _then_ some. You’ll have to try it sometime, but it’ll ruin you for _everything_ else.’

‘I feel so used,’ Anders said, though he sounded the opposite—or at least delighted about the prospect. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate the compliment, but… You _are_ talking about me, aren’t you?’

‘We were talking about something else,’ Zevran replied. ‘You were merely the lucky distraction held in place to delay the inevitable—is that not so, Isabela?’

‘You’ve caught me.’ Isabela flipped the blade one last time—with each twist and turn of the metal in the candlelight Fenris’s fingers twitched, empty of his sword’s hilt, only the impression of a target and nothing real to swing at. Shadowplay, Zevran called it: the currency of the Crows. Every inch of subterfuge and sleight of hand meant the difference between life and death, but it was not solid. It had no weight to it, nowhere to connect. ‘Have I mentioned how pretty _your_ eyes are lately, Zevran?’

‘You have mentioned everyone’s eyes,’ Fenris felt it prudent to remind her.

Isabela turned to face him, sliding her knife back into her boot. ‘And yet no one’s seen fit to mention _mine_. Now that’s just poor manners, boys.’

‘They are as lovely as you are dangerous,’ Zevran said. ‘They remind me of countless burnished treasures, of whiskey and firelight, of a vein of amber that has trapped so many sad little bugs—there; this poetry means we are even, yes?’

‘I’ve got my hands on this…relic,’ Isabela replied.

‘ _Now_ we are getting somewhere,’ Zevran said.

‘I don’t think I follow,’ Anders added.

‘You do not have to,’ Fenris told him.

If his purpose was to continue to provide inconsequential diversion, then he was fulfilling his role impeccably. But it did not deserve praise—because it was not done on purpose.

‘And I know you’re not into _heavy reading_ ,’ Isabela continued, ‘but that’s only if you want to be specific. You know I love it when you don’t split hairs.’

‘I know that I prefer to split other things,’ Zevran said.

Anders shuffled closer. ‘That doesn’t even make sense,’ he said. ‘Only _you_ managed to make it _seem_ like it did—and it gave me actual butterflies in my stomach. _Actual butterflies_. I always thought that was just a thing people wrote about because everyone else did, not because it really _happened_ to anyone. How does he _do_ it?’

‘Years of practice,’ Zevran said. ‘And it is not always easy. With your skills as they are, I would not advise trying it in public just yet. Now about this relic…’

‘You know how relics are,’ Isabela continued. ‘A few people seem to think it’s important, so I thought I might drop by to see my favorite assassin—’

‘—because you are currently being chased for what is now in your possession? Oh, _Isabela_.’ Zevran was on the verge of laughter again. The joke was as humorous as the one about the Nevarran nun; Fenris found he could appreciate neither. His hand tightened upon the hilt of his sword at last and Zevran’s posture also changed, like an alley cat that had just heard something rattle past a corner. It might have been nothing, a drunk relieving himself against the wall—or it might have been a hungry dog, just starved enough to challenge another animal on its own turf.

‘I prefer _pursued_ as a more general…something,’ Isabela said, waving her hand. ‘You remember Castillon, don’t you?’

‘A man like that _does_ so dislike it when he is forgotten,’ Zevran agreed. ‘A pity that it happens so often, then.’

‘Well—there you have it.’ Isabela stretched her arms high above her head. Fenris did not watch her muscles shift and play as he was focused on the door, Zevran ranging close to the window. All angles were covered, though there was never a corner without its shadows and therefore its dangers. ‘Because…I _might_ have forgotten about him. Or rather—that he’d _technically_ funded the little expedition, so _technically_ I owe him. …For the ship I stole. That was, _technically,_ his.’

‘A pirate’s life is so technical.’ Anders removed a stray feather from his belt. ‘I had no idea.’

‘What you mean to say is that he wishes to collect,’ Zevran said. ‘But, delightful as you are, and so spirited—you do not wish to comply with the rules of collection day?’

‘Getting my hands on it in the first place was _difficult_ ,’ Isabela finished. ‘You’ve no idea _how_ difficult. I had to be _so_ much _sneakier_ than I usually am, and you don’t just get rid of an adventure like that. Also, you know Castillon. Once I deliver the goods, he’ll probably think the best payment is slitting my throat—and not the enormous chest of shiny things I deserve.’

‘You’ve already got an enormous chest of shiny—’ Anders began.

‘Not that you would let him,’ Zevran said, preventing further commentary.

Isabela touched the pulse just beneath her jaw, swallowing against her fingertips. ‘I don’t,’ she agreed. ‘I want to break his neck, not his heart. There’s _such_ a difference.’

‘So you have come here.’ Fenris was almost surprised at the sound of his own voice, if only because it had been a while since last he heard it. The others were content to speak and speak often, to fill the little room with so much story and so much sound—but now their stories had ended. Poisons and walls and sharpened blades stood between a man and his fate, but they only worked so long as he did not unbar the door and welcome his murderers in, or stand about _talking_ while they secured their means of attack. ‘ _Why_ have you come here?’

‘You must forgive poor Fenris,’ Zevran said. ‘He is…how shall I put it? Ah yes: the only unsubtle thing in all of Antiva City. Thicker than leather—and perhaps he is even better smelling still—but he is, as I am sure you can tell by now, a straightforward sort of person.’

‘I could tell from the sword,’ Isabela agreed, giving it an admiring once-over, the same way the men in the taproom had admired her daggers. And her other assets, not quite weapons—but not without _their_ shadows and _their_ dangers, either.

‘It’s such a big sword,’ Anders added.

‘Just another of his many selling points, I can assure you.’ Zevran held up his palm, all the lines and stains upon the skin, the oils that had worked their way into the cracks from his vocation, from innumerable jobs and too many knives in need of polishing. ‘He does not understand what I implicitly do, Isabela—that you are simply here to see an old friend.’

Fenris scoffed. Anders made an answering noise, something close to a giggle but even more accurately termed a hiccup.

‘It’s that whiskey,’ he explained, covering his mouth with his knuckles to stifle a second noise that threatened to loose itself upon the room. ‘I heard all the Antivan local brews are made with the blood of merchant princes. It seemed a little over the top at the time, but now I wonder…’

‘Simply here to see an old friend,’ Isabela repeated. She stood and moved closer to Zevran, one of them on either side of the room’s lone window. Both were clever enough not to pass in front of it; neither felt the need to observe the street below.

What they knew of one another was their own business. Yet, Fenris had to admit, he harbored some measure of surprise that no blades had yet been drawn, no poisons other than gossip yet exchanged.

Isabela seemed the type. Zevran certainly was.

This was better than most of Zevran’s meetings with old friends usually went. No one had died, at least not yet; no one was even choking on blood. Something was afoot, and though the details were not strictly Fenris’s concern, the outcome would be.

Whatever it was.

‘I’ve a few contacts to meet with here in the city,’ Isabela said at last, tracing the shape of the blood-stain on the wall. ‘And I need Castillon off my back for the time being. Do you think you could manage that without too much trouble?’

‘As I recall, I _do_ owe you a favor from when last we met,’ Zevran replied.

At that, Isabela paused. Fenris caught her at the start of a grin, the flash of her teeth and the golden stud beneath her lower lip as she turned. Her focus shifted from Fenris to Anders and she sighed—while her grin merely broadened. ‘Two,’ she said.

‘Ah, Isabela—’ Zevran began.

‘ _Two_ favors,’ Isabela said. ‘By my count. Two favors because of that one time when Taliesin was—’

‘Of course!’ Zevran smiled, but not with his eyes—whereas Isabela’s entire body was smiling, if such a thing were even possible. ‘Now I remember. Never a head for numbers, this one on my shoulders—always so distracted by the finer things in life. But now I remember it perfectly—and there is no need to go into further detail in front of impressionable ears, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Isabela confirmed.

‘Now I _have_ to know,’ Anders said. He turned to Fenris. ‘Don’t you have to know?’

‘I do not,’ Fenris replied.

‘And your _second_ favor…?’ Zevran asked.

Isabela paused. She’d recreated the entire shape of the bloodstain now in the air and chose to tap the center in conclusion. The quiet sound was louder for the comparative size of the room—and how there were currently too many people unsettled within it. ‘This one wanted to see Antiva,’ she said. ‘Sweet, sheltered baby bird that he is. He wouldn’t stop talking about it on the trip over. At _one_ point, I distinctly remember having to gag him.’

‘Well, _that_ ,’ Anders said, ‘but also the members of the crew were complaining about all the noise—’

‘And he’s charming, _really_.’ Isabela took Anders’s chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting his face to the light. Anders blinked twice, as though there was dust in his eye, and Fenris saw only a long nose and the perplexed furrow of a tall brow, a face that could not be trusted for so many reasons, not the least of which being it clearly did not trust itself. There was ever the magic to consider—a poison of its own, more surreptitious and more discrete than anything held within Zevran’s bottles. There was also the foolishness, while those two ingredients that made for a treacherous combination. ‘You wouldn’t think it just to look at him—but then, you can’t judge him on appearances _now._ After all, it’s been an…extended trip; we took the long way ‘round past Seheron, and he never _quite_ found his sea-legs, the poor lamb. He gets underfoot sometimes, but he means well, and really it’s up to you whether or not his view of Antiva City remains above ground-level. And if he finds himself with a knife in his back before sunrise, well… That’s Antiva for you, isn’t it?’

‘The warmth of your spirit has touched my heart,’ Anders said.

Isabela snuck a hand around to his backside. ‘And that’s not all it’s touched—so don’t you _dare_ forget it.’ Zevran cleared his throat. ‘Jealous?’ Isabela asked.

Zevran performed one of his half-bows. It hid his face in the fall of his hair; Fenris had never once seen the expression that came with it, only the spread of his fingers and the curve of his back before he straightened. ‘Of course I am—and so _desperately_ ,’ Zevran replied.

Anders cleared his throat. ‘You know, I can’t help but feel—’

‘As though you are incredibly lucky to have lived past your first grievous miscalculation upon one of _Isabela’s_ ships?’ Zevran asked.

‘Right,’ Anders said, tugging at his collar. ‘That’s the very thing I was going to say.’

‘Marvelous doing business with you, as always,’ Isabela said. When she came close to Zevran again—to touch his throat with nothing more than an empty hand, her fingers against his pulse now and not her own—Fenris also felt the urge to clear his throat. The memory of Anders doing it so recently prevented him, though something stuck in the back, sharper and deeper than his tongue.

‘Was it business,’ Zevran asked, ‘or was it pleasure? I can never tell.’

‘One and the same, where I’m concerned.’ Isabela’s hair brushed his cheek and he turned against it; then, though it seemed they could do nothing more than continue moving into one another, Isabela pulled away. She was at the door a moment later, flipping the latch and toeing it open with one arched boot. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

‘And old favors,’ Zevran replied.

She was gone after that, laughing down the hall, Zevran answering her in a fond chuckle.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘That was not so bad.’

‘And what of this?’ Fenris asked, gesturing to the apostate in the room.

‘For later, I should think,’ Zevran said. ‘For now, I can only insist rest is in order. After all—dealing with Isabela _does_ have a habit of making a man’s energies feel all spent.’

*

Anders snored.

He was asleep soon after the bed was offered to him, a bundle of feathers around a pillow he had—for no discernable reason other than a deep flaw of his personality—brought with him. ‘I always travel light,’ he had said, ‘but I had no idea if there’d be any pillows when I stowed away on the ship, and if I was going to be sleeping between two pickle barrels, what else was I supposed to do? I mean—you can’t very well rest your head on a bunch of pickles, can you? It’s far too salty.’

It was Zevran’s bed that he occupied now, perhaps still smelling faintly of those pickles. Fenris glared at the frame until Zevran crouched beside him, his voice yet gilded with Isabela’s shared laughter.

‘Sulking does not suit you,’ he said. ‘In point of fact, I suspect it suits no one at all.’

It was not a sulk.

It was too angry for that, the proper response to a challenge of private property and an invasion of custom. They had no pets for a reason—if one fed scraps to an alley cat, it would never cease to yowl outside the window, _and_ invite its friends to do the same—and this was a similar concept. The idea of chaperoning a creature so unsuited to Antivan life was as preposterous in conception as its execution would prove hazardous to any who attempted the task.

Zevran’s friends already attempted—with regularity—to kill him. He had enemies enough on top of his friends who also attempted to kill him. They needed no more complications in two lives already too complicated.

‘After all,’ Zevran continued, ‘he is no more charmingly helpless than you were, when first we met. Surely you cannot have forgotten _that_.’ 

Fenris remembered the time—perhaps he remembered it too well, considering what else he had forgotten. Though the memories of his years in the Imperium were stark as ever, they always came to a sudden edge and steeply dropped into darkness. There was a point where it all ended in the past—suddenly and without warning—just as there was a point where it would all end in the future.

‘No, no no,’ Zevran said. ‘Go back to sulking. I prefer it to _that_ expression—such a dire old thing on far too comely a face for it.’

Fenris’s features did not obey; they were not in the habit of obeying. But Zevran did not protest again or make mention of their natural shortcomings, and so they sat together—as though there was nothing out of the ordinary in their evening.

There was still an apostate in their midst, a new poison tucked among the familiar bottles.

‘However,’ Zevran continued at length into the silence, ‘as you know, there is that bit of business to take care of with the proprietor of the _Bower_ refusing to pay his cut to the guildmasters, and what with one thing and another, _you_ will be the one to look after him while I am the one to look after that.’

After all that had transpired between them—after the terrible soup Zevran had fed Fenris the first few nights to return his strength to his limbs, all the candles burned down to stubs to keep the room lit until dawn—Fenris had not once considered denying a request.

This was not a request.

It was also not an order; instead, it presented itself as a suggestion, a possibility, a sensible one, when it was none of these things or even close. Fenris observed the heap of feathers as it fluttered against the shoulders beneath, rising and falling in peaceful rest.

No one but a fool slept peacefully in Antiva, and especially not in Antiva City.

‘The thing about favors, of course, is that we must always pay them forward. Isabela asks something of me; I, in turn, ask something of you; and, if we are all lucky, but especially if this Anders fellow is lucky, no one finds himself face down in a gutter when it is finished.’ Zevran sighed. ‘Well—someone must, by all means; otherwise Antiva City will lose its reputation. The trick, as always, is to be certain that someone is someone _else_.’

‘So I understand,’ Fenris agreed.  

‘Splendid.’ Zevran did not clap him on the shoulder. He understood space and its reasons with a swiftness Fenris had never seen displayed elsewhere, and so clapped himself on the thigh instead. ‘I _knew_ you would see the light. Besides—it would be good for you, I think.’

It would not be good for Anders, Fenris thought, and despite Zevran’s suggested he kept watch through the night, until the candle on the table had burned down to another stub.

*

In the morning the noise from the docks did not wake the mage in Zevran’s bed.

Zevran was gone already, to display the care of which he was always capable but _in_ which he did not always indulge. The forethought was natural to him—or a second nature, like Fenris’s lyrium, one that over time grew stronger than the first—despite his occasionally baffling decision to ignore it. Fenris had not asked about this tendency. It was not his place and neither was it his area of expertise.

Questions whose answers would do so little for the action that must follow made no matter either way. They were like poisons, Zevran had suggested once, and the most effective poison of all was the one that did not have to be employed. Whether or not he was right was just as much of a curiosity as his countless idioms for advice, most of which made less sense the deeper one probed their phrasing.

Still, Zevran was not dead yet. He would not be dead if he could help it—or if Fenris could help it—and that was the way of things. It had been so for three Firstdays, which in Crow years were at least three more times that number.

They aged even more quickly than the alley-cats and dirty curs that roamed the streets just before dawn and just after dusk, lives predicated upon what others threw away.

Zevran was quick. This was the finest word to describe him.

Fenris did not worry over it.

He did not worry over Anders, either; he did not even worry over the trouble Anders would cause. He _wondered_ —which was different—what would be enough to wake him, if even the press of hard steel against his throat would filter through the dreaming and the snoring to indicate his very life was in danger.

Fenris did not prefer daggers. Zevran kept his with him at all times, since any weapon thus discarded would just as easily be turned against its owner. ‘Better that they take it off my corpse and sell it then,’ Zevran had murmured, patting one of the blades as though it was kinder than its routine engagement in blood-letting implied.  

Perhaps it was.

When the sun at last appeared, Fenris began to sharpen his sword. He did not muffle his movements or quiet their implications. The suddenness of the clatter that ritual caused, the sound harder than any other Fenris knew, was finally enough to make Anders shift beneath the coverlet.

But he did not do it simply. His snore caught like a deep nock on an old wetstone; his left arm was tangled thoroughly in the sheets; his open mouth caught a clutch of feathers and the breath he drew sucked them into his throat.

He shouted.

Fenris felt that shout course with arcane promise through every line of lyrium engraved, etched, _branded_ upon his skin in ways he had not—dealing with other poisons, with other shadows, with Antiva City’s straightforward backstabbing—in quite some time. Anders’s fingers did not sparkle, at least, with the ‘electricity trick’ of which Isabela had thought so highly and spoken so openly, though he did manage to fling himself off the edge of the bed and onto the floor with a resounding thud.

There was no crack of bone to follow. He had not broken his neck, nor had he shattered his skull.

The floorboards shook with the impact nonetheless. It was no expensive architecture they suffered here—but it had its advantages.

The people below would assume a murder had just occurred, the thump from a body hitting the floor. Whether or not one of their neighbors had been killed or they had killed another in order to avoid the same fate mattered little when even the most thorough of dedicated gossips regularly had their ears cut off for their pains. They would pretend to look the other way, to hum in order to cover up the sound—and should the information prove valuable, they would sell it in an instant, heedless of the blood that stained their coin.

These transactions were simple enough, though they were not simple in the same way Anders was clearly simple, thrashing in his blanket until finally he pulled his arm free.

Then, he levered himself up onto his elbow and winced at an obvious bruise he’d garnered on the joint. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I _was_ expecting you to throw a bucket of water into my face—or even the contents of a local chamberpot. So I suppose this is better than it could have gone. Also, I didn’t wake up dead, did I? That’s _always_ a good sign—or so I’m told.’

‘Had that been the case,’ Fenris informed him, ‘you would not have ‘woken up’ at all.’

Anders remained drowsy with lingering sleep, a feather stuck to the corner of his mouth, the stubble surrounding it otherwise inoffensive. Yet there was something about it that rubbed Fenris the wrong way—perhaps its texture or perhaps its color, how it was all so indistinct or how it was no choice in any obvious direction. It was in between just as Anders himself was in between, still attempting to kick the covers off his legs, but only half-heartedly.

‘Interesting view from down here,’ he said, chin on his palm, staring directly at Fenris’s face.

Fenris drew the stone down over the flat of his blade with a pointed scrape. He kept his greatsword honed and Zevran said this worked in two-fold fashion: one, that the blade would ever be prepared for its numerous enemies, which was Fenris’s intention; and two, that any who saw him would immediately feel the chill of terrified attraction run cold and hot through their veins, a contradiction that addled the mind and confounded the heart.

Fenris considered this immaterial when compared to the first outcome.

‘Ah, but that is where you are wrong,’ Zevran had told him countless times. ‘A man’s appearance itself can win or lose a fight before it ever has cause to begin.’

‘This is the same theory as the poisons,’ Fenris had replied.

And Zevran, with an unsubtle wink, had explained it was _all_ the same theory as the poisons.

Anders yawned, covering his mouth with his palm, then scrubbed his eye, then realized there was a feather—now on his chin, but still stuck to his face. He peeled it off and gave it a baleful look.

‘Can you make wishes on feathers?’ he asked.

‘Toward what purpose?’ Fenris replied.

‘If I _tell_ you, then it won’t work, will it?’ Anders closed his eyes, his nose wrinkling in deep thought. A few moments passed—they were pleasantly silent—before he huffed the feather off his fingertips, where it danced just as lazily on the air.

It was difficult, Fenris admitted, to cleave a simple feather with even the keenest of greatswords.

A weapon was only as effective if it was somehow applicable—hence the parable of the poisons.

Such constant implications offered too many headaches, Antiva City requiring all its occupants to be on their toes at all times. Fenris was currently on the balls of his feet, in a crouch with his blade settled between his knees. Anders, on the other hand, was still half on his back, only the toes of one foot poking out from underneath the blanket.

‘But when do the assassination attempts start?’ he asked around another yawn. ‘I _think_ I saw more action on Isabela’s ship.’ 

‘Apparently so,’ Fenris said.

Anders blinked. ‘Was that a joke?’

Fenris returned the stone to its pouch and the pouch to its shelf, his lone possession amongst Zevran’s glass bottles and powder pots. The smells of morning were already beginning to overwhelm the stuffy room, though Fenris would no more open the window to let in fresh air than he would invite a guildmaster to spend the night—or meet with Danarius in a shadowed alley.

 _Danarius_. It was not that he had not thought the name in some time, for he thought the name at all times, at every light bootfall that followed in the wake of his shadow or after every cry in the marketplace. But there were moments when the name faded under the creak of the wood, against the flush of ghosted lyrium in the darkness, when Fenris completed a job and returned the pay, their cut and the guild’s cut, to Zevran—for he was merely the consulting assistant, as Zevran explained, and there was an order to uphold, an order especially in the chaos of a job called _murder_.

Fenris’s mouth hardened. It was a game of chance—and a game of _pretend_. That Danarius had not come was no indication he would never come.

But Antiva was different. In Antiva, everyone was running.

Even Anders was running, it seemed—though he was doing so slowly, picking his way out of the blanket as if he might still be able to blame the cloth for his indignity, rubbing the bruise on his elbow and one on his backside, then bundling the sheet into a single ungainly ball. He dropped it at the foot of the bed and sighed.

‘I was going to laugh,’ he said. ‘At your joke. I really was. It was a good one, and that’s what people do when they joke around—they laugh about it after. They don’t trail off in broody silence or get up and show off their big weapons some more and positively kill the mood for no good reason. …Though I suspect that’s not all that gets killed around here, is it? For all the reasons, not just the good ones.’

Fenris glanced to the blood stain on the wall at the same moment as Anders did.

‘I bet there’s a story behind that,’ he added.

‘There is,’ Fenris said.

He strapped his sword to his shoulder, where the weight bore down on him in a familiar and manageable way. It did not chuckle or spit feathers onto the floor or threaten to open the window—as Anders did now, trotting over and pressing his nose against the glass.

‘I’m _really_ in Antiva City,’ he said, breath staining the streaked pane of glass.

That much had been obvious for some time. Fenris folded his arms and gave no reply.

‘And there’s _really_ a tannery down there.’ Anders wrinkled his nose. ‘And _also_ an entire warehouse of dead fish, from the smell of it. They didn’t put all that in the books, did they?’

‘I would not know,’ Fenris replied.

There were some things that would not die in Antiva City. Flesh could always be sundered and blood ever spilled, but certain concepts remained immortal. So, too, did certain conversations. Anders clung to this one with the determination of a healer that did not know his patient was long dead, past the point when revival was heroic and into the realm of abominations.

‘By the way,’ Anders said, ‘are there many templars here?’

Fenris’s throat tightened. So did his fist. ‘There are enough.’

‘A circle everywhere, I suppose.’ Anders pulled back from the window, chafing his arms with his palms. ‘Some things never change. Even in Tevinter—’

‘And what do _you_ know of Tevinter?’ Fenris asked.

Anders blinked. He glanced toward his staff—which stood at an angle in a far corner of the room, far enough that Fenris would easily reach it before Anders ever did.

Feathers could not be cut. Staffs could.

Zevran did not trust in people as such; he trusted in treachery and also its prevention. Fenris was a part of that trust, something that to them was unspeakable and common. One might even call it shared.

He had already let Anders take Zevran’s bed from him. He would brook no more surprises.

‘Breakfast,’ Anders said.

‘Breakfast,’ Fenris repeated.

‘It comes after last night’s dinner and before today’s lunch,’ Anders confirmed, and—without pause—his stomach whined in contribution. ‘The very meal I always like to have in the morning instead of at any other time, unless I want to be _particularly_ naughty. Do you think we might—’

‘We might not,’ Fenris said.

‘We can’t very well stay up here forever,’ Anders said, though he sounded unsure of that.

‘It would not be forever,’ Fenris replied, drawing himself a chair.

He suspected his patience would far outlast their current guest’s.

*

It did not.

There was chatter poured ceaselessly into the silence—and loud noises, sudden sighs, wistful moans, drumming fingers, tapping heels, rustling feathers, a cacophony of constant commotion, all of which filled the room more completely than any of the dockside smells. Anders yawned and laughed and composed limericks on the spot, occasionally all three at the same time; none of the ditties rhymed, so spectacularly unfunny that the laughter they engendered—all of it Anders’s laughter and never anyone else’s—seemed more insult than humor.

‘ _Did_ they ever tell you about the nun from Nevarra?’ Anders asked, in a rare moment of contemplation.

Fenris leveled him with a look—he had not thought of it as something cultivated until that moment, though now he took Zevran’s meaning.

Unfortunately, the look itself did not take. The fight had apparently been won—or lost—before it ever had cause to begin.

Or so the saying went.

Anders had seen something or he had not seen something necessary to inspire the cultivation of fear. He did not know fear was Antiva’s currency, more than its gold coin and its limitless poisons. In fact, it would have been easier and more efficient to list what little he _did_ know than what he did _not_ understand, for the former was manageable but the latter without end.

He was a mage. There was _that_. Even without a staff to hand, this self-assurance must have been as pleasant as it was mindless—as most pleasures were.

‘It’s just funny,’ Anders said, while Fenris suspected whatever came next would not—by the law of averages—be funny in the slightest. ‘I mean, I finally make it out of the tower, where I was all locked up as pretty as you please, and then what happens? One night— _one_ night of glorious freedom and electricity tricks and sparkling fingers all over the place, _one night_ to show off what it could be like if I wanted to be naughty _all_ the time—and after that I’m just locked up in other places again. In the hold of the _Siren’s Call_ ; in a smelly room in Antiva City… What’s next? A Nevarran nunnery? It won’t even rhyme! And _you_ won’t even take me out for walks. You’re worse than a templar, although I’ll admit your armor is _so_ much nicer to look at.  Oh well—never judge a tome by its cover, as Karl used to say.’

Fenris did not consider the obvious questions: _Who is Karl_ was the first, and discarded immediately; _Why would Karl say such a thing_ was the second, and would likely be answered whether or not it needed to be.

‘Because all the clever scholars,’ Anders continued, trailing his finger along the table, wincing when a very small splinter caught beneath the nail, ‘know that to entice poor young readers into using their books for pillows and sleep-aids, they should gild the binding as much as possible. _Ooh, it’s so shiny_ , we all think, stopping to pull it out from the rest because it stands out so _well_ , assuming there has to be something just as nice—maybe even nicer—on the inside. But then it’s all dates and ages and definitions and things you’re not supposed to do instead of the things you are—and before you know it, your head’s drooping onto the pages, and you wake up with ink-stains all over your face. _Again_. Jowan once cheated off my cheekbone and never got caught because the senior enchanter didn’t have her spectacles that day.’

‘Did this _Karl_ talk as much as you?’ Fenris asked.

That had been the third question.

‘Hardly,’ Anders replied. ‘Amusing you should mention it, too—because he was always complaining he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.’

Anders sucked at his injured thumb after that. Fenris half-expected a spell to ease the minimal pain, large things to comfort the small ones, as he had always seen in the Imperium. The price of one man’s relief was another’s difficulties. It maintained a precarious balance upon which all of Thedas turned—and it _did_ turn, regularly, a gravity that crushed so many within its orbit.

Instead, Anders looked guilty—an expression that did not inspire even a shred of confidence—then spat the splinter out when he was finished, toeing the spot it might have landed.

The hem of his robe rolled up. His boots were not his own—clearly an odd pair, likely from Isabela’s ship, hand-me-downs no longer in use by their original owner, who may well have drowned during a storm—and they had a hole in the toe where the leather had cracked from sharp winds and salty rain.

‘I was thinking I could get a pair of boots,’ Anders added, feathers rising and falling with a hopeful sigh.

‘With what coin?’ Fenris attempted to keep the question from lifting at the end, so that it became more of an accusation than a conversation piece.

Anders blinked. The feathers trembled, though he did not flinch outright. The battle, Fenris reminded himself, had already been won. The book could not be judged by its cover. And so on, and so forth.

‘I thought I’d haggle,’ Anders said at length. ‘Did you know a pirate queen thinks _I’m_ charming? That has to mean _something_.’

Fenris had been there for the compliment in question. He had thought it seemed closer to a consolation prize, to be followed with a gentle _there, there_ , as Zevran sometimes did to antagonize the other members of his guild for whom he had little more than regular contempt. ‘We must be so kind to those we hate,’ Zevran had explained, while borrowing Fenris’s stone to sharpen an old dagger.

Fenris recalled Danarius’s honeyed words—and considered this made the most sense of all Zevran’s regular idioms.

‘If you have nothing to offer, they will have nothing to sell,’ Fenris said, recalling another old platitude. It was deceptively simple in that it made Anders think very hard.

‘That’s one of those things, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘When someone says something that everyone knows already, but you sound so grave while doing it, or look so mysterious, that suddenly everybody thinks you’re clever?’

Fenris had not been accused of cleverness before. Strength, yes, and at times physical intimidation—and at other times physical beauty. ‘No,’ Zevran had added, ‘beauty is not the right word for it. Attraction in its purest form is so rarely _beautiful_ , after all.’

No accolade was ever without its complications. There were many things to which Fenris was not immune, but flattery had never been his coinage.

Now, Zevran would have said, he was starting to think like a true Antivan—though there had never been a time at which some form of that basic exchange had not weighed heavier than a greatsword upon Fenris’s back.

‘…And _now_ you’re following it up with mysterious silence.’ Anders leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his knuckles—and caught himself another splinter for his efforts, this one on his bare arm, beside the bruise from before. ‘But—ow!—it won’t work on me. Silence never does. Silent treatment, silent solitary, silent punishment—’

Fenris held up his hand.

‘—silent silence—that one’s the worst…’ Anders trailed off. Perhaps he was surprised to see there was lyrium also on Fenris’s palms—a purposeful choice to enhance the strength of his grip, to permit his hands to sunder flesh from bone as easily as they tore boiled leather from hammered steel, but also to ensure there would be nothing he touched that would not also be touched by another. He would not see his lifelines without considering how his life had been altered.

In fact, he would not see his lifelines at all.

But that was not what troubled him now. Instead, it was the sound from without, a soft thud against the wall subtler than any apostate falling out of bed with a more obvious crash.

With Anders chatting away as he seemed to feel he must, Fenris had almost missed it. It was followed by a scrape, some hitch of torn leather dragged against a rough wooden wall, with most of its plaster chipped away over merciless time.

Fenris stood. Anders attempted to do the same, though he banged his wrist on the table and knocked his calf against the chair. It was nowhere near the level of sound he produced regularly, but it was enough to cover the noise made by the latch as it was thrown.

Then, the door swung inward. Zevran waved, a cheerful flutter of his fingers.

Fenris smelled blood.

‘Is this a talent of yours?’ Zevran had asked the first time Fenris mentioned it, both of them cleaning their weapons dockside. Down below, the waters sloshed and the boards creaked; the ships had been quiet in their berths, the moonlight softened behind a cloud. There was blood on Zevran’s hands—not his own blood—but Fenris had always smelled that, too. ‘Another trick of the lyrium, perhaps?’

‘Instinct,’ Fenris had replied, which Zevran said was _even better_.

But a man who had done, in Zevran’s own words, _a little bloodletting_ in his time did not sway on his feet unless the favor had been returned.

Fenris moved quickly—not as quickly as Zevran did regularly, though Zevran’s speed was not unassailable, and this moment was symptom of that.

Few could be so quick all the time. Zevran had no lyrium markings of his own. The tattoos he bore, as Fenris understood them, were of his own choosing, while the scars he bore alongside them were not.

They were separate, though. Most did not even pause to consider that as _luck_.

Fenris also did not move as quickly as Anders—who suddenly displayed an equal instinct for blood, its taste and promise on the air, whenever it was hidden beneath armor but drawn beyond flesh. He closed the door at Zevran’s side as Zevran sagged, on knees too weak to stand.

He was bleeding. This was obvious. It was not enough to splatter along the floor or leave red footprints in his wake, yet that was customary. Blood itself left a trail all animals of prey followed to feast upon the wounded.

‘Castillon,’ Zevran said then. ‘A difficult man to talk to—and that is only when _talking_ is the indulgence of the hour—’

‘Sh,’ Anders suggested. ‘I have it on good authority that _Fenris_ here doesn’t like it when people talk too much.’

‘Tell me, my dear wayward mage,’ Zevran added, ‘is it possible that my luck has finally turned for the better, and you just so happen to be a healer?’

‘Spirit healer, actually,’ Anders replied. ‘I won’t get into the specifics, but suffice it to say—I’m even better than what you’re looking for.’

His feathers were no longer quite so wilted. Fenris paid them no mind, already gone to the door to check that the latch was shut again, that all locks were in their place. His hand came away with blood upon the fingers, blood tucked into the glow of lyrium, the heat of his pulse so much quieter than the heat of the other pulse that also beat there. When he laid his hand upon the latch a second time, it was to throw it open—to return to the late afternoon that sent Zevran back to them this way, to find this _Castillon_ with his penchant for slitting throats. It was to divest a man not of a heart that worked in the more romantic sense but to remove the muscle from its task, and so end the danger of the man who owned it.

‘No, no—’ Zevran reached after him but, as always, they did not connect, much less touch. ‘That…is no longer necessary. I took care of the man myself, of course, but to think you would not assume this—ah, my _feelings_ —they are wounded indeed—’

‘Even more so than your gut, I wonder?’ Anders asked, steering him like a little ship with no captain in the direction of the bed.

Fenris stared at the blood beside the lyrium. Perhaps the instinct and the markings were not so different as he had believed.

Trusting in that was not a lie of purpose but a lie that revealed what he lacked.

‘Castillon is dead, then,’ he said.

Zevran’s bed creaked beneath a doubled weight. On most other nights Zevran sank against it with something still light in every limb, hooking his ankle over his knee to remove his boots with reverence. He cared for those boots, protected them from rain and all the wetter garbage of the streets, each brown puddle that oozed between broken cobblestones. Fenris saw that even now, there was no blood on that leather.

It should not have mattered, but somehow it did.

Anders did not remove the boots, though he knelt beside the bed and fussed with the buckles of a belt. There was a commotion of lockpicks and flasks, something spilled black upon the sheets. That was not blood, either.

But Fenris was not so foolish to assume that if he did not see it, it was not there. Some was already drying on the tip of his thumb and when Anders drew back one of Zevran’s domed pauldrons—dinged and weathered from exertion, with the glint of a sweat sheen upon the metal—the wound made itself clear at the shoulder, a deep thing in the vulnerable flesh just above Zevran’s collarbone.

‘Nothing so vital as _guts_.’ Zevran chuckled. ‘All in all, it was a _thrilling_ afternoon. Had he only asked me to dance first, it would have been perfect indeed.’

‘I can see that,’ Anders said. ‘Our afternoon was…thrilling, too. No one stabbed anyone else, but we came so close—and I think Fenris was about to _try_ it, at least before you showed up.’

‘Do you forgive me for interrupting you?’ Zevran asked.

‘I might—in time,’ Anders replied. ‘But I don’t know if I can promise anything. Once someone like _me_ has a grudge, I cling to it until the bitter end. Nothing else to cling _to_ , you see.’

Zevran leaned back against the mattress with an accommodating sigh, head resting against the ball of sheets as though it were a pillow or even an acceptable substitute for one. He was favoring his right side, where he was injured; the smell of blood was soon joined by the tang of magic, its shivering promise thickening the air.

When the two scents mixed the resulting spell rose like bile in Fenris’s throat.

It was a natural aversion. ‘It is a good thing, then, that I cannot often afford real healers,’ Zevran had said when he discovered this so-called quirk, and he had always tended to Fenris’s few wounds with no more than his hands and their capabilities, the injury kits those hands could steal and thus apply.

They served. They were _good enough_ , though that assessment did not apply to all wounds. Neither did it apply to all people.

There was a distinction between what he denied and what Zevran deserved, though Fenris could no more articulate it than he could release the noise of frustration burning in his throat.

Zevran was not a pale man—but it was possible to see pallor fall over any who had lost enough blood from some vital area. These wounds were the trickiest ones. Some assassins were more stubborn than others. Fenris clenched his jaw until he wondered if his teeth would turn to chalk dust and choke him where he stood.

His empty hands—emptier now than ever, it seemed—flared with an answering light, a tension to remind him that he was so rarely in control of these urges. The lifelines were not his. The lyrium burned brighter than the rest. There were spell wisps in the room, spirits called upon for healing, and they danced with curiosity as Anders conferred with them.

He gave them his requests. He drew upon light that he controlled, though Fenris could not always believe that was so. Wherever the orders came from and however the bargain was sealed, Zevran sighed again, tipping his chin up, allowing the torn muscle to be mended.

And it was.

It was a talent well-praised in the Imperium—not to mention well-rewarded. Such men and women with this _gift_ were rare, those designed to heal rather than to hurt, though the former always implied the latter was necessary. Some practiced their craft on patients they had injured themselves in order to see how long they could keep a suffering creature clinging to life. Others withheld their talents until the highest bidder came forth, and by that point disease had already set in, the area festering with pain and the wounded delirious with fever. Fenris could not remember a time when any healer had been called to tend one of his garnered pains that the cure had not been somehow more bitter than the hurt.

At least he had taken the pain onto himself with the actions of his body. He could bear that because it was all he knew, while healing was a different beast of burden entirely.

Zevran did not seem to mind it—but Zevran did not mind a great many things. He weathered the sleeting rain with as much good cheer as he weathered the jeers of taproom patrons, implications that he was the son of a whore and therefore no better than one himself, the length of his leather skirts and all mention of what lay beneath. He weathered whatever was said of his ears and, on occasion—when the coin was good—would purchase those who offered those insults whiskey straight from the tap.

‘Poisons?’ Fenris had asked.

‘Poisons,’ Zevran had replied.

Fenris knew of poison, but not of how it was mixed or how it was served. There were some who understood where to place it at the source and watch as it crept through the veins; there were some who knew only how to _be_ poisoned, to _live_ poisoned, to _become_ a poison.

‘Now, now,’ Zevran said into the silence. ‘There is no need to be so _dramatic_.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Anders asked, less quick with his tongue now that he was being so quick with his spells. ‘This is _Antiva_.’

‘We are aware,’ Fenris said.

‘Fenris is always so very _aware_ ,’ Zevran added.

Fenris waited for the laughter, but Anders did not so much as giggle. He leaned closer to Zevran instead and into the bright aura of light that surrounded them, though it was already beginning to fade. It did not gentle. It had never been gentle. Fenris considered the promise of a headache as Anders pressed his fingers to his temples and Zevran ran his touch over his collarbone, feeling the workmanship as he tested the heft and balance of any new blade.

‘Not even a scar.’ He sounded impressed. ‘What a pity. In the Crows, we collect such things as readily as we collect the teeth of our enemies. But, Isabela was right—ah, she is always right! Though I cannot compare _this_ trick of yours to one of…electricity, I am sure both are equally enjoyable, in their own fashion.’

‘Charming _and_ useful,’ Anders agreed. ‘…If I do say so myself. Do you think I’ll be able to service _all_ the Crows?’ He paused. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeper now, his mouth drawn tight. His eyes still sparkled. ‘I’d say that came out differently than I intended, but actually, it came out _exactly_ the way I wanted it to—if you know what I mean.’

‘There is no room in Antiva City for an apostate healer,’ Fenris said. ‘You will be dead within the week—and that is a generous estimate. The only reason you did not die today is that you did not leave this room.’

‘And here I thought I almost died today _because_ I was in this room,’ Anders replied. ‘Trapped here with you and no witnesses… I feared for my life at every turn. If I hadn’t stopped talking, you’d _probably_ have snapped. …You don’t _really_ collect the teeth of our enemies, do you?’

‘Fenris,’ Zevran said. ‘Would you mind terribly showing him the teeth?’

Fenris found he did not mind. He felt Anders’s eyes on him as he retrieved the pouch, shaking its contents into the palm of his hand. Most of the contents were yellowed with age, with poor eating habits, stained by sour whiskey and other ruddy drinks.

Anders gulped. Zevran chuckled again. Fenris’s hands were not empty, though these were not his spoils.

His blade did not fit in a man’s mouth. He required no obvious mementos of a war that was not even his to fight, in which he played the part of a mercenary to another who—on occasion—required his assistance.

But Zevran required more than Fenris’s assistance. He required a healer’s hands, and a healer’s hands were never empty.

Fenris returned the collection to their proper place while Zevran inspected a dent in his pauldron, shaking his head, the light in his eyes—despite the lack of wrinkles at the corners and the tension in his mouth—snuffed out.

Fenris could still see the final sizzle, that last hint of acrid smoke whenever any candlewick was pinched. But beyond that, there was no glimmer, no flash, no hard edge of a dagger’s curved blade polished before the stain of the kill.

‘Well!’ Zevran clapped his hands against his thighs. ‘It is always a fine day when one has survived an attempted murder before supper. That way, we do not have to miss supper itself. We might dine up here—or take our charming and useful friend on a less private tour of the city, perhaps?’

Fenris recalled the first tour Zevran had given him. In the course of an hour he had seen two assassinations in progress, a third foiled attempt, and three bloated corpses fished in over the docks at dusk.

‘And you said you did not like the smell of actual fish,’ Zevran had said. ‘Is this not just a _little_ bit worse?’

Still, it had not been Minrathous. The weapons were hidden up until the moment they were not. In Antiva, there was always an unsheathing. One did not spill one’s own blood in order to secure power but rather spilled the blood of one’s enemies, and that appeared to Fenris to be preferable.

It was death that did not lie about being messy. It was not healing—and neither did it pretend to be more generous than it was.

The ruthlessness wore a cowl instead of a circlet and a smile.

The poison was not the same poison.

Anders did not have the stomach for it. He did not have the face for it. He had no single weapon to stand against it save for the unnatural, the healing he had offered without pretense, before securing his earnings for giving it.

He had not paused, Fenris recalled. He had not even requested payment for it. Perhaps being kept alive and so protected was payment enough but there might easily have been more: a sly demand or a hesitation, Anders’s hands held back until they were met with the bounty of a desperate promise.

Fenris saw there was no scar below Zevran’s throat. The only blood of his that remained was upon the leather and upon Fenris’s hands, and no doubt on whatever blade Castillon had raised against him.

‘Fenris is not often hungry,’ Zevran explained. The sound of that name echoed in a foreign way even on Zevran’s tongue, until Fenris remembered what it meant—or what it was supposed to mean.

‘Maybe he is, and _that’s_ why he looks so grumpy,’ Anders said. ‘Did you ever think of that? That he just needs a few good meals and he’ll stop making all those _faces_?Also—and this is a real possibility—it could be the smell. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a barrel of dead fish outside your window _and_ a tannery across the street. That can’t be natural. It can’t be _healthy_. No wonder Fenris wants to murder charming, useful people.’

‘Because it is _smelly_ here,’ Fenris said.

It was not a question.

Anders held up his hands. Now they were empty; Fenris saw that. They did not hold back, either. It was an unusual gesture, no fingers pointed, no lyrium plucked and plundered, no spell conjured between palms. No—Anders was too busy talking for that.

‘Don’t underestimate the power of a good smell,’ he said. ‘Or a _bad_ one, for that matter. Whenever it was lye-making day in the tower, _all_ the apprentices acted out. Well, they said they were going to, anyway. I was the only one who _actually_ stole the smallclothes from the senior enchanters…and come to think of it, the First Enchanter didn’t accept my explanation back then, either. He made the _exact_ same face you’re giving me now, only with more beard and fewer shiny bits.’

‘Charming,’ Zevran said.

‘But not useful,’ Fenris felt it necessary to point out.

‘You’re just as fun as the pirates,’ Anders told them. He stood—Fenris detected a momentary wobble before his balance returned—and looked hopefully at the locked door. There was also a hesitation in that hopefulness, as though he at last did not trust what lay outside, mercenaries with merciless knives, men and women who would slit his throat were he to laugh too loudly during their mealtime or splatter mud on their boots from a puddle in the street. ‘…Only you have more teeth than they do. Literally more teeth. …In a bag on the shelf with the collection of—are those poisons?’

‘We are not pirates, my spell-casting friend,’ Zevran said. ‘We are Crows.’

‘Oh, well,’ Anders replied. ‘They’re better than seagulls—even if they aren’t as exciting as griffons.’

*

Zevran remained unshaken and laughed more loudly in the taproom that night than ever, as though each new joke was more uproarious than the last. Fenris recognized the instinct from prior behavior—it was a pattern, not without its regularities—but he could not find it within himself to do the same. And Anders took to it like a pigeon to water, not outright drowning in the tactic but splashing wildly all the same.

Presumably he had all the right parts to execute such behavior. He certainly had all the right feathers for it.

Anders managed to laugh at the jokes and tell too many of his own in turn—but he also stared at any new patron who entered the room, lifting his head too quickly each time the door swung open and hit the wall or twisting in place whenever there was a sudden bout of laughter elsewhere, near or far. The noise, Fenris could have told him easily, did not mean danger. It was the sudden _lack_ of noise he had to fear, a silence that descended where noise should have been. It was what lurked unseen in the shadow that could kill him—before he realized he had anything _to_ fear—rather than any sell-swords and guild members who spent their coin grudgingly in the torchlight.

Anders drank. After the energies of the day, he drank too much. Zevran offered none of his usual wisdoms to caution or to encourage; only once did Fenris see him rubbing his throat, somewhere higher than his earlier wound.

Zevran caught him in the act and winked. That wink might have been chastisement had it come from anyone else—knowing what Fenris knew of the place, friends and enemies and both together, there were times when it did more harm to stare at an ally than an unknown—and Fenris accepted the punishment, choosing to observe the natural whorls in the wood planks of their table.

Those had not been placed there against their will. Though the tree they once belonged to had been chopped down and their shape changed to suit the purpose of another, altered by the hands of another, they maintained their instincts. They remained, in some ways, untouched and natural. They served the men and women of Antiva City—those undiscerning enough to dine even once in _The Hide_ , much less regularly—but their original lifelines lingered behind the other stains they garnered. The stains made them grow darker, more obvious, even as time and action wore them down.

‘It is a tragedy,’ Zevran said.

Fenris blinked to find he was being observed in turn—though he had no sudden response, no clever little wink, to turn the situation in his favor.

‘Everything’s a tragedy,’ Anders agreed, tipping his tankard upside down with the lip closer to his eye than to his mouth. Something splashed onto the bridge of his nose for his efforts but not onto his tongue; then, his cup was truly empty. ‘Especially the comedies. There’s _nothing_ sadder than a comedy.’

Zevran patted him on the shoulder, hand disappearing amongst the feathers, coming away with a few that had molted free in the process. He flicked them easily to the floor to join the sawdust.

Nothing ever lasted here. No wounds, no feuds. The meaning of them was eternal—that there would always be some continuation or contribution was without question—but their players were in constant rotation, with excuses more than motivation. They did not wait; they knew the inevitable would come to them if they attempted to postpone it.

For that, there was always some immediate resolution. For that, friends were always becoming enemies—or they began as enemies, so as to avoid the long period of insufferable pretense.

The door banged open, slamming against the wall as it did so. Anders jerked to look at it; Zevran did not. But Fenris found himself lifting his eyes too quickly to the doorway with a single thought—a single name—for he was not without that instinct even now, the stains left upon him, the shape another man’s hands had decided he should be.

But it was not Danarius standing there with a host of restless acolytes in tow, bearing a staff the same way he wore the smile on his face—two of his finest weapons.

Of course it was not Danarius.

‘A tragedy, that is,’ Zevran continued as though no time at all had passed, as though there had been no interruption, ‘to have so much here to look at—so many pretty men and women, a charmingly useful apostate, a lustily roguish Crow assassin—and yet Fenris chooses to observe _the table_.’

Anders ran his fingers over the edge. The boards were so well-worn that they had achieved a sort of polish, one that would not splinter. He did not tug away to suck his thumb with a wince, merely fitting his fingers into the old grooves—perhaps the same way he reached for his staff, though he had chosen wisely not to bring it down to supper.

‘It’s a handsome table,’ Anders said. ‘Looks…sturdy, at least. Neither comic _nor_ tragic—the lucky thing. Wonder if it could teach _me_ how to be neither?’

 _Neither friend nor enemy_ , Fenris thought.

But was that something else, or nothing at all?

‘Perhaps there is some meaning here the two of us cannot understand,’ Zevran added, touching his pulse instead of the table—an obvious gesture that drew attention to the torn strap of leather on his pauldron, the only scar that presented testimony of his afternoon. Fenris did not have to imagine Castillon’s body where Zevran had left it. He did not have to consider the implications of that murder, either, for it would go largely unnoticed until revenge came into the equation—should there be any loyal enough to the man to tangle with the Crows for his sake.

If there was such devotion inspired, its owners would soon be thinned out—until their devotion wavered, and then was lost. They would realize what they should have known all along: that their friend was dead; that he had never truly lived as their friend in the first place.

‘Still,’ Zevran added, lifting his tankard—which was not yet empty, nor was it close to full, ‘we _do_ paint a pretty picture, do we not? All three of us together—if I were a stranger, I would think we were planning something delightfully devious and wonderfully wicked.’

‘Charming and useful,’ Anders agreed, lifting his empty tankard in turn.

Fenris had nothing to lift. The door had blown shut again, no sign of Isabela blowing past it to join them, the winds outside fine and stron—for filling a raised sail.

‘Tragic and comic,’ Zevran repeated.

‘Friends and enemies,’ Fenris said.

They seemed surprised he had spoken and also, in their own ways, secretly pleased. Or not-so-secretly; it was obvious and sly on Zevran’s long face, tipsy on Anders’s, stamped plain as the whorls on a plank of wood or the blood-stain on the wall of any inn lodgings.

Fenris’s shoulder twitched, an old habit that rolled off into something more smooth, though it never fully relaxed. Anders’s shoulders twitched too, though this was more obvious due to the feathers.

‘Isabela isn’t coming back, is she?’ Anders hiccupped, pressing his fingers to his throat, where there was nothing more memorable than scattered stubble to be found there. ‘I mean…she dropped me here like I really _was_ cargo—I certainly _slept_ enough with the cargo and _smell_ like the cargo—and now she’s off having adventures on the high seas with her relic. Isn’t she?’

‘Healer,’ Zevran told him, ‘you must understand by now: this is what pirates _do_.’

‘And I suppose I won’t be so lucky that the Crow at my table will suddenly turn into a magpie.’ Anders sagged forward onto his elbows, rubbing his throat more obviously now—not remembering an old hurt but considering future ones. The realization had finally struck him. It might pass with the effects of his drink in the morning—or it might linger. ‘I mean…I _have_ been known to be shiny. At the _very_ least, I sparkle.’

‘Also, without some manner of guidance in Antiva City, you will likely be dead within the hour,’ Zevran said. ‘And that…that is a generous estimate.’

Fenris had been thinking the same thing. Zevran’s voice might have been kinder than the sentiment but the sentiment itself remained unkind.

Anders shivered, though the air of the taproom was always hot and sweaty and close. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I always wanted to be a Crow.’

‘Can you pick a lock?’ Zevran asked.

‘No, but I _can_ pick my nose,’ Anders replied, then laughed. ‘See? Nothing more tragic than comedy.’

‘That depends on the comedy,’ Zevran said. ‘Still, a spirit healer always has his uses—no matter where it is they go.’

Anders’s grip tightened against the table. ‘That’s true enough, I suppose. …Although I find I’m _usually_ going straight back to the tower.’

‘Who knows?’ Zevran finally took another sip of his drink, swirled it in his mouth as though it were a fine wine, then gulped it down rather than spitting it out. His sigh implied it hit the spot—literally hitting it, a force as violent as any he had met with his blades drawn. ‘The circle here might prove far more fun than the circle anywhere else.’

‘Oh, no,’ Anders said. ‘The Fereldan Circle is _always_ more fun.’

‘Tell me—is it there that you learned this infamous electricity trick?’ Zevran asked.

‘Where else?’ Anders’s knuckles loosened, yet they were still white, splotchy pink at the center—never one thing; never its opposite. ‘It isn’t as though they took us out for _practical lessons_ in the fine art of _applicable seduction_. I _think_ they figured we’d get enough of _that_ from all the demons.’

‘Pfaugh,’ Fenris said.

‘You see, Fenris is charming and useful as well,’ Zevran added. ‘In his own right.’

‘In his own right,’ Anders agreed.

‘Well…’ Zevran twirled his fingers in the air, one more spell of his own, though it did not sparkle; his tricks were not ones of electricity but rather shadow, whatever dark things lurked in the undertow of the brighter ones. ‘There is always the Imperium. You have proven a fine stowaway thus far, after all, and I am told all roads lead there—to Tevinter, that is.’

All roads also led away from Tevinter—just as any path had two clear and opposite directions, a destination that was a starting point, a starting point that was a destination. Fenris knew that his own path was drawn in this same way, though perhaps it also became a circle in the end.

A tributary thus poisoned made no distinction between where the poison began and where it flowed.

‘Tevinter,’ Anders repeated, with the sense to lower his voice, a hush that preceded another shiver. ‘…It isn’t as though I haven’t thought about it, _that’s_ for sure. Who doesn’t? There isn’t a mage in the world who doesn’t imagine those black spires with some amount of illicit excitement. _You_ know how it is.’

‘I cannot say that I do,’ Zevran said. ‘Yet I like it. It sounds scandalous.’

‘But…’ Anders licked the corner of his mouth, tongue darting against a patch of stubble. ‘The thing is—I mean, when you get right down to it—it’s so much _work_ , isn’t it? You have to be so _ambitious_.’

‘And you are not ambitious,’ Fenris said, a question that swerved at the last moment from its original purpose.

Anders tugged at the earring in his ear, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Unless you count ‘not getting caught by templars’ as an ambition,’ he replied. ‘Some days, I suppose it is. They’re stubborn when their pride’s on the line, worse than most because they’re so _obvious_ about it. They can’t pretend no one caught them failing because they’re so big and clanky and easy to see, especially in the sunlight. …You don’t think they’d come all _this_ way to find one wayward apostate, do you?’

‘That _is_ your area of expertise and not mine,’ Zevran reminded him.

Anders fell silent after that, nursing a cup that was empty with hands that might well have been so. Where Fenris had observed the table, Anders observed the bottom of his tankard, nose buried in the deep shadow.

‘A mage who prefers Antiva City to the Imperium and a warrior whose strength comes from being—at times—completely intangible.’ Zevran leaned back in his chair, the toe of his boot tapping the leg of the table. ‘And a Crow who behaves more like a magpie than some nobler or more ruthless beast.’

‘Collecting shinies?’ Anders asked, looking up hopefully.

‘Collecting the charming and useful,’ Zevran replied.

*

It was not Fenris’s decision to make, nor was it his decision to caution against.

That did not mean he liked the choice in any way—or that he would pretend to like it.

There was an extra bed in the room for Anders to ball the covers all he wished without disturbing anyone else’s sleep; the snores, however, would not be so unobtrusive, and neither would the rest of him

There was no silence where Anders was involved. Fenris enjoyed the quiet, though it was never ample substitute for peace.

Isabela had not attempted to kill Zevran; this was presumably a courtesy, which most of Zevran’s friends did not regularly afford him. Fenris had been there for many such attempts and he had not been there for many more. None had involved an apostate in the room after.

The scars that lingered had not been healed as such; those remained for a time, but Anders was a larger memento of the visit.

It would not last. Such things never did.

Isabela had, however, set into motion other actions—and other people’s attempts on Zevran’s life. It was not uncomplicated by any stretch, but that it had the same effect in the end implied that it was the same.

Perhaps.

‘You looked after him so well this afternoon that I _hope_ I am able to trust I may return tomorrow morning without _all_ his feathers having been plucked?’ Zevran asked. He toyed with something golden—it appeared to be an earring, perhaps taken from a more recent target, one of the many shiny things he was so determined to collect these days—before he made it disappear, beneath a strap of leather across his chest.

He was visiting another old friend— _Taliesin_ , whose voice set Fenris’s skin on edge, rather than the lyrium. They had not killed one another yet, while by the way Zevran spoke of him, they had often tried it.

‘I make no promises,’ Fenris said at last.

‘No,’ Zevran agreed, ‘you never do. And I suppose _that_ is why I appreciate your charms so very much.’

Fenris had no business with which to occupy his empty hands. ‘And my usefulness,’ he replied, though at present he did not feel _useful_ at all.

Zevran left by way of the window and across the nighttime rooftops, the red clay no more colorful in the moonlight than a collection of gray shadows or gull feathers. He was showing off, but to what purpose—just like the faded cracks and chips in the tiles—Fenris could not see.

For a moment it seemed as though this was freedom, the choice to behave as a child or a scampering rat, to use an open window when the door was a bare few paces away. To contradict the order one trusted, or at least recognized. But when Fenris remembered the earring, he suspected that had a chain of its own, one kept where it could not be seen.

Zevran also wore a ring of the Crows, a small metal band that allowed him to move as he pleased—but not _where_ he pleased.

Fenris did not have to wonder what sort of chain was implied when someone wore feathers at his shoulders.

Nonetheless, he found that he _did_ wonder.

Anders was already preparing himself for another nighttime of snores and restless lurches, of muttered words in the darkness, of tangling himself in blankets and pillows. The only reason Fenris had slept his first few nights in Antiva City was because of the fever that forced him to sleep and the dreams that followed, wearing faces he thought he recognized but could not remember.

Now, he kept watch. Only a few hours were necessary here and there while all else was keeping vigil. Being useful meant more than being charming, especially in such a place as this.

 _Then to me falls the dubious burden of being charming for us both_ , Zevran had said in the past.

‘Well,’ Anders said now.

Fenris did not reply.

He heard the shuffle of feathers and the bustle of sheets being turned down. He imagined that Anders would step around a sharp corner the next day or the day after that, all in quick time, curious about a whisper or a laugh or a promise or nothing more than a shadow; that he would find a dagger between the eyes or more likely between the shoulders; that he would be one of countless casualties in such a city—and that it would not matter that he had slept in the bed across the way at least twice, or that if he had healed someone who was neither friend nor enemy but also not a stranger. Not anymore.

Isabela might still return. There might be another boat that caught Anders’s interest. There might be templars or a curious patron, a guildmaster who recognized the good investment of having a spirit healer around as a pet for whenever the customary blood-baths became messier than usual. He might live as an asset or die as one; there would be others to protect him, then turn on him, friends to enemies as the balance often went.

This may have been what Zevran was thinking.  

‘Well,’ Anders repeated, louder this time.

It was not _well_ at all.

Fenris sat with his back to the wall in the corner that gave the single best point of scope and vantage. The room could be seen from all angles there and gave a prime view of Anders sparing no thought for those angles: taking off his boots, sitting upon the edge of the bed, bouncing against the mattress, socked feet tapping the floor as the bed-frame creaked.

‘ _Well_ ,’ he said a third time.

Fenris folded his arms across his chest, sword resting at his side, the weight and the gleam of the blade brushing his thigh. Anders’s staff was far across the room, but even the sleeping viper could strike at a moment’s notice.

Anders did not reach for that staff. He tucked himself and his feathers beneath his blanket instead.

‘People usually say goodnight,’ he said. ‘When other people are going to bed. That _is_ how it works, generally.’

‘is it?’ Fenris replied.

Anders sighed, then attempted a laugh. ‘Not really, no. And usually I’m a bit more… _bound in chains_ than I am now. Hard to sleep like that. Harder still to have a _good night_. But I keep thinking, _maybe_ , if I give people just the slightest reminder then someone, someday, _might_ pick the old habit back up again.’

‘It will not be a good night because you will be snoring through most of it,’ Fenris replied, and spoke no more of the matter after that.

*

The moon had slanted across the floorboards to mark the time. Fenris would not sleep with a mage in the room no matter how the mage differed from any he had ever known.

If circumstance made Anders feel anything other than conversational—if it made him feel lonely or even afraid—then it had every right to. He had not snored for some time, though his breathing was even; at some point Fenris was lulled by that into a sleep he had not anticipated, also one for which he had not planned.

 _Even the wolf lies down for the crows,_ he thought he could hear Zevran say. His words chased his laughter through dreamless sleep, or a sleep Fenris had always assumed was dreamless, though now it was full of paler feathers and a different sort of laughter—perhaps even the occasional snore. There was light, healing, a road that lead somewhere other than Tevinter and which may have stopped in Antiva City—or somewhere even further from the Imperium’s border.

Then, Fenris woke. The floorboards were creaking, not the bed-frame. A shadow had fallen across the moonlight.

Fenris reached for his sword. A hand stilled him, palm against his thigh.

After all the almost-touches, the gestures avoided, the connection incomplete, everything Zevran danced around but did not dance _with_ , Fenris would have expected the touch to be painful—or that it would recall pain from the past and drag it into the present, implying it was all there was in the future.

It was not painful. There was no dragging. There was only something light against the dark leather, not nearly as heavy as the brush of a weapon.

 _A weapon_.

Fenris paused. _His_ touch danced around the hilt of his greatsword, rather than dancing with it.

‘ _Please_ not the sword,’ Anders said. ‘Anything but that. It’s just so _large_ , and I’ve heard everything they say about assassins with big weapons—all the flattering things, all the not-so-flattering things, too—but it’s not how I pictured this night going. So if it’s all the same to you, let’s _not_ cut my head off. How does that sound?’

Fenris blinked into the darkness. His fingers flexed, catching Anders by the open collar at his throat. The grip seemed ineffectual somehow, until he remembered that it was without armor.

He had removed his gauntlets for the night.

That was a mistake.

But Anders made no move to exploit it just as he’d made no move to turn one of Zevran’s daggers against him when he was wounded, to take the money or the power or both. One often went hand in hand with the other.

He had said something—he had said a great many somethings—but the something that lingered was in regards to ambition. Anders claimed he did not have it.

This was not possible. Yet Fenris had once considered escape impossible, too, so much so that he had not considered escape at all.

The mages of the Imperium left scars because they could.

Anders had not left a scar because he did not have to.

The feathers rustled as they always did, with Anders breathing too loudly as _he_ always did. His hand was still upon Fenris’s thigh. It was warm.

Fenris cast about for some understanding of the currency that drove Zevran to act and other men to die and yet more to flee, to maintain their positions as enemies while wearing the smiles of close friends, to maintain their positions as friends while wearing the smiles of a great enemy.

Fenris knew this. He had seen it too many times to count upon the guarded—or unguarded—fingers of both hands.

‘Do not,’ he began.

‘Too late for that, I’d say,’ Anders replied. ‘I mean, not that I _have_ , but it’s obvious all the same what I was _going to_ , and my pride’s probably gone for good either way. What little I had to begin with, I mean. Whatever’s left over from the ‘picking my nose’ line from earlier.’

 _Nothing_ , Fenris considered.

Nothing was left.

‘This is not necessary,’ he told him instead, his thumb still looped in a hole meant for a button, between two parallel lines of brocade. The button itself was on a loose thread, perhaps torn in a moment of charming usefulness.

‘I try not to be necessary,’ Anders said. ‘I’m far too busy being other things.’

He did not understand or he was being deliberately obtuse. Fenris suspected it was the later, especially from the sparkle in his eyes, which was far brighter than moonlight and also a different color, piercing the gray of the night.

But no matter what he was or was not, he knelt upon the floor: knees bent, body settled between Fenris’s legs. The position was one that did not speak of comfort or of choice.

He believed it necessary to do this for protection’s sake, Fenris realized. It was not uncommon to bargain what one had for what one did not have—when what one did not have was also what one _needed_ , in order to survive.

‘Do not,’ Fenris said again, firmer, his voice torn upon more than the slur of sleep.

Anders’s expression flickered but his hold did not waver. Neither did it tighten, a simple place where they both met, still separated by cloth and other implications. His lips parted and his eyes no longer sparkled, but the feathers _did_ continue with their rustling. Fenris suspected they always would, so long as the man who wore them drew breath.

‘It _was_ the picking my nose line, wasn’t it,’ Anders said. ‘Not that I should keep bringing it up if it was… I _knew_ I shouldn’t say it. But whenever I know I shouldn’t say a thing it’s actually impossible— _actually impossible_ —for me _not_ to say it after all. That’s sort of a spell too, you know. It’s a physical compulsion. It gets me into trouble and out of people’s arms and you’d think, after battling countless personal demons, _this_ —’

‘You do not have to do this,’ Fenris clarified.

Anders—at last, though Fenris had not known such a thing was possible—stopped speaking.

Then, he licked his lips, tongue pausing against the stubble as it had at dinner. Perhaps it had a flavor of which Fenris was not aware.

‘Oh,’ Anders said. ‘No, no no—’

It sounded similar to Zevran’s usual protests, though it lacked the eternal chuckle that accompanied them. Fenris was not moved to supply that chuckle. He was also not moved to disentangle his fingers, one hand bunched full of cloth, the other on hard pommel leather.

‘You think I’m offering my body for your support or…something,’ Anders continued. ‘Your protection? Well, flattering as that is—in a roundabout sort of way—that’s not… I mean, _I_ wouldn’t…’

‘I have seen it done often enough,’ Fenris replied.

‘Of course.’ Anders bit his lip now—to taste that flavor Fenris did not know. ‘Is it so hard to believe that I’d want to make a few good mistakes my first time in Antiva City? Everyone seems so convinced I’m not going to last the week—no, I know, everyone speaks more in a matter of _days,_ but I’m trying to be more optimistic than you lot; I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?—and if that’s the case, there’s so much I haven’t… And you were staring at that table so hard, and you looked _so_ attractive while doing it, but also so…so _something else_ …’

‘You are on your knees because I am ‘something else,’’ Fenris said.’

‘Exactly,’ Anders confirmed.

‘ _You_ are something else,’ Fenris told him.

The sparkle had returned—not in Anders’s fingers, mercifully, but in his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

It had not been a compliment. When Fenris considered how it had been framed, it was an honest mistake, just as so much about Anders was honest.

Just as too much was honest.

He did not think it _appeared_ honest because the _appearance_ of honesty was a more pleasing thing. It was honesty in the raw that got in the way, that snored loudly enough to let all and sundry know when a man was in his deepest spot of sleeping. It was honesty in the raw that ran to the door without question, eager to assist a man in pain because it was within his power to do so. That memory still rankled—how Fenris could do no more than touch the blood, while Anders had done more than simply clean it away.

Fenris frowned.

‘You’re frowning, Fenris.’ The sparkle wavered, as flighty as the feathers, but it also lingered like them. ‘Is that how they say _you’re welcome_ in Antiva? If only someone would thank _me_ for something, I could try the custom on for size, myself.’

‘That is not the custom here,’ Fenris said. ‘You know it is not.’

‘Obviously,’ Anders agreed, not with a chuckle but with a breathless laugh. ‘I know I don’t look it because I’m so charming and useful all the time, but this is a bit…what’s the right word? Terrifying?’

‘If I am so terrifying—’ Fenris began.

‘It isn’t that.’ Anders’s fingers gave Fenris’s thigh a near-involuntary squeeze; the change in the touch, or what it might have meant were it to continue changing, sent a bolt of heat not unlike an electricity trick up the length of Fenris’s thigh and straight into his belly, as though it existed solely to pierce his gut. There was no magic. The lyrium did not burn. But the rest of him did, the skin between the markings, which he had always thought of as the scar tissue before—the dead flesh that no longer felt anything, while the open wounds continued to ache as they always did.

Perhaps that aching had been ‘something else,’ fed by sunlight since he arrived. Perhaps his body had felt ‘something else’ all along, only he had not been prepared to recognize it.

‘You’re frowning again,’ Anders said. ‘But…you’re also looking at me the way you looked at that table.’

‘You are something else,’ Fenris repeated.

Anders closed his eyes. The sparkle had to go out then, Fenris was certain of it, but even with the expression hooded and hidden he knew somehow it was still there. Anders had turned his face upward. Fenris found he was anticipating a spell he already knew would not be cast, the pitfalls of a touch he already knew had no bitter after-taste.

A new feeling set in. It was connected to the heat that stabbed him through the center, to the base of his spine where it pressed against the wooden chair at his back.

It was, as Anders said, terrifying.

‘I mean, I can see where you’d get the idea,’ Anders said, piercing the silence as his touch pierced elsewhere. He still had not opened his eyes. ‘Me down on my knees in front of you like this—it’s _almost_ like something out of an adventure-romance.’

‘I would not know,’ Fenris replied.

‘Ah. So _that_ explains it,’ Anders said.

Fenris knew before he took the bait that he was about to take it. ‘What has been explained?’

‘Why you don’t know what comes next,’ Anders said. ‘Why you haven’t—this is what happens now, or somewhere closer to about…three minutes earlier?—tugged me just a little closer and kissed me. _Yet._ ’

The _yet_ joined with the _changes_ and the _changing_ , the _something else_ that stood between them. Anders opened his eyes at last, face turned upward, then seemed to regret having done so—not because he thought Fenris terrifying but because he did not know what _Fenris_ would think, much less what Fenris would _do_.

Fenris was still holding his sword, for one thing, and the clutch of his hands was tighter than ever around both handfuls, neither of his palms empty. And there was also—always—the lyrium.

‘I see,’ Fenris said.

He saw a great many things, so it was not a lie. He saw the fall of Anders’s hair over his brow and how tall that brow was; he saw the stubble in the hollow of his cheek and the earring that caught the moonlight in his right ear; he saw the way the heat in his eyes did battle regularly with some colder force and neither was the victor because neither would cease trying to wrestle for the upper hand. He saw the flush above the stubble, that little corner Anders worried at—and almost saw the taste of it, as well.

He saw that there was taste.

He did _not_ see what it meant.

But he eased one hand loose, relaxing its fingers, drawing it away from what it clung to. It was not the hand that held the front of Anders’s collar.

The greatsword remained where it was—as it would no doubt always remain. It did not fall because Fenris was not there to hold it up; without it, Fenris’s hand felt empty by comparison, without a purpose and without an obvious goal.

What came next had already been explained—but just as Fenris saw that there was taste and did not see what it meant, he could not know how _what would be_ and _what was_ were connected. He felt that they were one and the same, but not how they would find each other.

 _All roads lead to the same place in the end_ , Zevran might have said. _A shallow grave, if a grave at all._

Anders also had one empty hand. Fenris regarded it, not without a measure of wariness but not without a measure of _something else_ within the wariness. It lifted under this scrutiny, drawn through the air toward Fenris’s cheek. There, Anders’s thumb rested against Fenris’s jaw, between the lines of lyrium upon his chin, while the other fingers spread against the bone.

The skin reacted, not the scarring—not because the scarring was dead or did not continue to burn, but because the skin itself was still capable of feeling something.

Or rather—it was capable of feeling _something else_.

Fenris did not close his eyes. Anders did not look away. His fingers splayed wider against Fenris’s cheek, curled below the cheekbone, a soft touch that brought with it the warning of promise and potential.

‘I know that this is not a kiss,’ Fenris said, his voice drawn from a deep place inside his chest.

‘That’s—’ Anders’s voice, not drawn from a deep place, hitched. ‘It’s good you know that,’ he managed at last. ‘It would be _so_ awkward if you didn’t.’

He moved upward. Fenris found he did the same in reverse, inclining his head somewhere lower. They proceeded slowly—far more slowly than Antiva City ever allowed its denizens to act, all things done quickly to avoid being caught with one’s hand in the lockbox—and there was a moment, a few moments, during which Fenris did not think the kiss would come.

But the kiss _did_ come. Anders’s nose bumped Fenris’s cheek and he laughed, a single gasp of a sound, which served only to part his lips when their mouths met.

It settled at an odd angle, one Fenris had not measured from his vantage point in the corner of the room. He could taste that spot of stubble, though, and found it was little more flavorful than hot breath and the memory of a passing meal, chased by whiskey that was _not_ passing.

Still, there was no displeasure in it, and neither was there disappointment.

Anders came forward along the ground, his knees scuffing the splintered boards. Fenris was careful not to pull him too quickly or apply any drawing force at all. He knew how a high collar could be gripped and tugged and tightened until breath seemed an impossibility, until swallowing itself was an unthinkable labor. He also knew how easily what a man wore could be turned against him, for if they were trapped in their own skin they were just as likely to be trapped in their clothes as well.

Armor hindered as much as it protected. Just because a thing was light-weight did not also mean it could prove a tangle, a knot—or a burden.

Then, Anders came to rest between Fenris’s legs, steadying himself against his thigh. The kiss was most eager just before it ended, at which point they rested, nose to nose and brow to brow.

Fenris supposed he was waiting for what came next. He could be certain of nothing else, save for the knowledge that Anders would enjoy talking about it at great length.

‘ _That_ was a kiss,’ Fenris said.

‘Not just any kiss,’ Anders agreed. ‘A first kiss. Although it’s not _my_ first kiss, not for a long while, and not _yours_ either, I hope—’

‘No,’ Fenris said. ‘Not that.’

‘—but ours,’ Anders finished. ‘Which means there might just be more, if you know what I mean.’

This time, Fenris thought he did know—because he could make a well-informed guess. The tip of his thumb brushed against the skin of Anders’s throat beneath the fabric of his collar, flesh unscarred but not unmarked, with stubble and shadow and a racing pulse. Once it had done this it could not draw back and so Fenris’s hand turned, even more slowly than they had proceeded together before, knuckles turning against the side of Anders’s neck, where there was a tangle of loose hair, fallen free in the night of its leather tie. When Fenris brushed it back toward the nape Anders shivered.

Fenris could not be certain whether or not that shiver meant the chill shadow in his eyes had won its private battle—for after all, that was the most customary cause of any shiver: the cold itself.

Yet Anders’s skin was hot—hotter than the midday sun over the docks, making the fish stink and the dockhands sweat. There was a bead of sweat also tucked just beneath his ear where the pulse was most easily felt, swelling and skipping beneath Fenris’s fingertips.

‘You…are not a table,’ Fenris said.

For once, Anders could not think of a suitable pun for a clever reply.

*

Anders’s mouth was suited to many purposes; his tongue was just as quick when he was not talking as when he was. Anders undid the laces on Fenris’s trousers and drew them down; he was at the right height for a task Fenris did not want to consider in this moment—not with his chest as full as his belly with complicated longing—and so gestured with both hands to stop him.

He found, when that was done, that his palms were at the back of Anders’s neck—where the collar fell open just as the front of Fenris’s trousers had.

‘If you tell me _do not_ again—’ Anders warned, lips already swollen.

‘You… _wish_ to do this?’ Fenris asked.

Anders proved that he did the only way he could—not with protest or commentary but with his mouth lowered over Fenris’s dick, ready and open and hot.

This proceeded quickly and not slowly at all, though no one’s hand was stuck in a lockbox. Fenris sagged in the chair and did not grip or jerk or wrench. He did not lift his hips or let them fall again or thrust as the body, _his_ body demanded, as Anders’s tongue encouraged, as though this were conversation and yet again Fenris had fallen short with his end of their chat.

The feeling of relief was as clear and strong as the remnants of restraint. The pleasure was heightened for its hesitations. Anders stroked him low and long, hair falling over his face, tickling the vulnerable skin at his belly and thighs. And Fenris made no sound, though his fingers spasmed once in warning before the end.

Or was that the beginning?

There was neither start nor finish as it occurred, in a space called _during_ or perhaps just _in between_. Fenris made no sound and afterward Anders rested his prickly cheek against the inside of his thigh.

‘I’m going to say something now and it’s probably going to ruin the moment,’ Anders said, breath gusting over the shadow known as Fenris’s skin.

‘Have you not done so already?’ Fenris asked.

There it was at last, a chuckle as self-conscious as it was contented. ‘You’ve _no_ idea,’ Anders said, ‘how awful I can be.’

Fenris considered the tragic jokes—those he had heard, those he had yet to hear, those he might soon be hearing. It was likely this assessment was true, at least for the time being.

His body was at ease in a way it had not been for years, in a way he could not remember it ever having indulged in being. Each muscle was lax and easy, each comfort unhindered by the suggestion of what it might cost; though the knot in Fenris’s belly remained, another had unfurled. He knew already it was possible to be two things at the same time—they all wore other faces in this place but also everywhere else in Thedas—yet there was now a third option, the _something else_ of which Anders had spoken earlier.

‘By awful I mean charming,’ Anders added.

The word was beginning to lose all meaning, if it had possessed any in the first place.

‘Then you are charming,’ Fenris acquiesced.

This did not solve a thing. Anders offered no more commentary. He stroked that sensitive spot between Fenris’s hip and his dick but it was not toward any purpose; it was what it seemed and gave itself no name at all and at each pass, Fenris’s skin prickled in answer.

That was all the conversation they needed.

*

Sometime close to dawn Anders drew away; he stood with a creak of his knees that was not enough to draw Fenris after him, though he did find reason to shake his head and lift his hand in confirmation, or rather confirmation’s opposite. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘No—not nothing. It’s definitely _something._ But I’d say it’s more the good kind of aching than the bad one. Better that than lying around waiting for someone and wanting them and doing nothing for years, isn’t it?’

He could have mentioned a host of other details: for example, where there was lyrium and where there was not, something with as little charm as it had use. But instead he left it at self-deprecation and crawled into bed, rolling onto his side and watching Fenris from where he rested, chin on one hand, his eyes—and not his fingers—sparkling.

At length those eyes grew drowsy, then fell shut. Fenris did up the laces on his trousers, followed by the buckle of his belt. The chair creaked once with his movements but after that, all was silence—until Anders began his snoring.

Fenris continued his vigil. Had any attempted to enter, he would have cleaved them in two despite the relative peace he had found, if not in mind then in body.

Zevran did not return for another hour or so, with the same care as most ships displayed in giving a pirate’s galleon a wide berth.

His eyes were sparkling, too.

He had been with his friend—perhaps also his enemy—though that night, it seemed, was a rare one, in which no attempts on his life had been made despite the company he regularly kept.

‘And all the rumors would have you believe _I_ move quickly,’ he said, working his boot free at the tight heel. ‘Not quickly enough, it would seem. Ah, but what am I saying? I think he will be good for you—that is, if such a thing as _good_ exists in Antiva City.’

Then, he retired his poisons into the silence—for what little remained of the night. 

**END**


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